For a change, this guest post was not written by my Mum. Instead, it was offered to me by a friendly lady named Ella who works for a website named Flowers by Post.
The reason why I decided to publish this guest post, against my first impulse, is that there is no financial gain in it for Flowers by Post. Contrary to what you may think (and what I thought when I first saw it), the website is not set up (yet) for commercial activity; you can look all you like for a catalogue or online price list or order form or phone number - there isn't one. Instead, as Ella explained to me (she really was very patient with me - I had so many questions before I agreed to do this!), "...the function of this website is to provide
certain infromation to our readers, regarding flowers. It is projected to perform informative not practical function and
this is why there is no available option for ordering bouquets. As you could notice there is also a blog section, containing
intriguing and useful information about flowers."
So, here goes:
GROWING ORCHIDS
Orchids have been growing in popularity significantly over the years, but the awareness that anyone can grow them successfully indoors is what has caused a serious boom of purchasing the flowers and their seeds. There are three varieties of orchids which are considered easy to grow indoors and they have their own characteristics you need to consider.
One type has the reputation of easily adapting to indoor conditions. It comes in a wide selection of colours; the leaves are fleshy and thick and the flower stays in bloom for up to three months.
Recognized for the wide range of beautiful colours, another orchid has markings on its blooms and the petals finish with a frilly edge. The blooms remain for about a month.
Also known as the Dancing Lady Orchid, this is a versatile flower which can survive in different conditions, even in cooler temperature. The blooms range in colour and size and thrive easily indoors.
One of the top characteristics of the orchids, for which they are highly favored, is their fragrance. Most florists and gardeners state that no other group of flowers produces such a wide range of scents that can be compared to the orchid’s fragrance. Of course in order for the orchids to grow beautifully and smell divine, you need to provide some basic conditions and care.
Humidity and temperature are vital factors for the survival of orchids, when grown indoors. The majority of orchid types develop well when the room temperature is between 16 and 29 degrees Celsius. Since the natural habitat of orchids (at least for most of them) is a humid location, you need to pick an area at home that has a higher humidity level. One of the ways to do that is to prepare a tray of moist pebbles or gravel, without any water and place the orchid pot on that. This way you are securing just enough humidity for the flower.
Watering depends on the duration and quantity of rain that the chosen by you type or orchid would get in its natural habitat. In hot weather, increase the frequency of watering. You can try watering the orchid once a week and see how the flower will take it.
In the wild, orchids usually experience a mixture of sun and shade, without exposure to strong sunlight. In order to replicate this environment condition, place the orchid pot on a window which is facing east in summer and then move the plant to a sunnier window for the winter.
When you are planning orchids use a well-drained soil which will allow the circulation of the air around the roots. The normal fertilizers are not suitable for these plants. You can use a water-soluble fertilizer. If the orchid is lacking the adequate nutrients the leaves will turn yellow.
To sum it up, it could be said that growing orchids is not the hardest of tasks, but you need to be aware of all the specifics and needs of this plant. Orchids are expensive and this way you can ensure that you have this beautiful exotic flower at home throughout the year. It brings a definite touch of style, sophistication and luxury which can brighten up any room. As long as you try to treat the orchid as if it is in its natural habitat, growing it will be successful.
This is the 2nd book by Debbie Macomber that has found its way to my shelf, and just like the first one, it was part of the small stack of books my mother-in-law gave me to take home when I went to see her in England earlier this year. You can read more about the author and find a link to her website in my first review.
6 Rainier Drive is the 6th book in a series about a town called Cedar Cove; it is not necessary to know the first five books in order to enjoy this one, but I suppose it would have helped me to feel a bit closer to the various characters. As it was, I never really got "into" the story; I'm afraid I hardly cared about how things were going to turn out for everyone.
Maybe the main "problem" for me with this book was simply that there were too many characters to follow, too many plot lines to keep up with, each of the 46 chapters dealing with one family or household, taking turns between enough of them for me to sometimes come across a name, stop for a second and think "Who's that Gloria again?"
Admittedly, there is a list of characters at the start of the book, almost 3 pages long, but I couldn't be bothered to consult it while I was reading, and after a few more sentences, I always remembered who was who; this certainly took away something of an otherwise pleasant reading experience for me.
The things the characters are going through range from the mundane to the dramatic; there are family reunions, births (no deaths), a crime is solved that was commited already in the previous installment of the series, romances begin and end. Only one relationship between a male and a female character does not go the way the woman would like it to go; everything else really ends well, which is probably one reason why Debbie Macomber's books are so popular.
Someone who has been following this series from the start is probably eagerly looking forward to more stories from Cedar Cove; I doubt I'll read another one anytime soon.
A question to everyone who knows anything about horses: Can you really say that a horse is "pawing frantically" the air when upset? Last time I looked, horses had hooves, not paws...
And if you were to ring your daughter-in-law, would you say "This is Ellen Bowman, your mother-in-law", instead of just saying "Hello, it's Ellen", trusting that your daughter-in-law would know which of the dozens of Ellens she knows is on the phone?
(Yes, I know - that's again me being a bit particular about details.)
Wikipedia says about the author:
St. George Rathborne Prolific American dime novelist
and series book author. Likely produced in excess of 330 volumes of
fiction in the course of a 60 year career. He had a strong proclivity
for and obvious skill in producing outdoor adventure stories, and his best works fall within that category.
He lived from 1854 to 1938, was married and had four children. From 1910 onwards, he wrote almost exclusively for the juvenile series genre, clearly aiming at boys' general liking for adventure. Apparently, he used more than 30 different pseudonyms, which were not always documented, making it difficult to attribute all of his works to him.
"The House Boat Boys" was first published in 1912.
This places it in the same time frame as "The Ship Dwellers", which I have recently read and reviewed here, and although the intended readership of the one differs quite from the other, the books have more in common than just the time of writing:
Both books deal with a voyage aboard a ship, with all that entails: living in a confined environment with the same people around them all the time, adventures good and bad along the route, as well as the careless (because it was considered normal back then) display of racism.
The story in itself is simple enough: two young lads (about 16), both without parents, are offered the possibility to work and live aboard a large freight steamer, where the uncle of one of the boys is captain. To make the long trip from their Kentucky home town to New Orleans in order to meet the freight ship, they use the shanty boat owned and lived in by one of the boys.
Along the route, they meet friendly people and some less so; they get into real danger a few times but also discover an unexpected fortune. Their friendship helps them through everything, and their good hearts as well as physical and moral strength does the rest.
"Negroes" and "darkies" are referred to almost as a different species, but the boys are sensitive and sensible enough not to condone lynching (it does not take place in the story, but is referred to a few times) and feel decidedly uneasy about the methods of 'coon hunting employed by the planters down South, while they themselves have no qualms in shooting ducks, geese and possums to spruce up their daily diet of fish.
I did like the book well enough to read it as a whole; the river itself, the landscapes passed through by the boys, their friendship and how they go about their daily lives aboard the boat are depicted interestingly enough to have made me reading on. It was not very long and kept me company for a few lunch breaks. I won't actively look for more books by the same author, but this one was, I think, a good example of boys' books from that era. And of course, it was a free ebook :-)
Well, not really a parade, but an exhibition, just like last year's one, which you can read about here. This year, the theme was "Switzerland" (it being the home country of the company who organises the exhibition), and so the pumpkin displays showed all sorts of things associated with it, such as the Matterhorn, cows, Wilhelm Tell, the Swiss flag, cheesemaking (I think), a man playing an alphorn (if you are not familiar with what an alphorn looks and sounds like, simply go to youtube and type "alphorn" in the search box; there is plenty there), and so on.
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| The Matterhorn |
Knowing that the exhibition is going to close in two weeks' time, and with another wonderful Golden October day ahead, my Mum and I decided to go there yesterday.
Now, we're actually not that keen on the exhibition itself, but we are glad it attracts so many visitors from all over the world, bringing attention to our home town and money to match. We love our palace grounds very much in all seasons, and wanted to have a look at the beautiful colours of trees, bushes and flowers now that summer is over and the atmosphere at the park is quite different.
As long as the exhibition lasts (about 6 weeks altogether, I think), there is an extra area where one can have food and drink, everything has something pumpkin in it: pumpkin soup. pumpkin risotto, pumpkin quiche, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin sparkling wine, and so on.
We managed to find a seat in the sun, and I enjoyed the quiche very much; we had some pumpkin sparkling wine with it (the taste reminds us more of apricots than of pumpkin, to be honest; it is very fruity and sweet), and my dessert was a pumpkin cookie.
Walking in the park, taking a rest on a bench every now and then, was a most pleasant way of spending this beautiful sunny afternoon. It may well have been the last time this year that we walked there together, but the park will still be there next year, waiting for us in spring with the first buds coming out.
A bit of a daft title for a blog post, but it was what came to my mind first when I decided about today's post.
This is Lucky, my downstairs neighbour. Sometimes he allows me to pet him, and he's always up for a little chat when I look down from my bedroom window first thing in the morning and he is on the patio, as I showed you back in July with this post.
It is a lot colder now at night, and I don't see him as often as during the summer months, but on one of the lovely sunny Golden October days we had last week, he was on the neighbour's garage roof when I looked out of my kitchen window.
As soon as I started talking to him, he began rolling around - I was too far away, but I would have loved to tickle his belly there and then!
...is, of course, the one my Mum makes at home!
She has been making pesto for a long time and with varying ingredients, and the other day, she gave me a jar of Basil pesto.
As far as I know, it also contains olive oil and pine nuts, as well as salt and pepper; if anyone wants the recipe, I am sure she'll be happy for me to post it.
Anyway, this pesto was so delicious I was very much tempted to eat it directly out of the jar with a spoon. Instead, I was being good and made myself a hot meal for a change (instead of my usual cheese sandwich for lunch); I still had some mushrooms left over from the weekend, and some pasta, so it all combined very nicely.
If you look closely, maybe you'll see the shape of the pasta - it's flowers and Hello Kitty heads :-D
Today, I am going to spend my lunch break at my parents', so I am guaranteed to have a delicious lunch, no matter what it is going to be!
A very short post today, probably not unwelcome after my lengthy book reviews :-)
It was Monica who took a walk in the fog the other day and showed us her beautiful pictures; incidentally, I had taken a picture of the foggy view from my kitchen window around the same time, but unlike her, I didn't go out, and so there is only this one to show:
If you compare it with the many other pictures on my blog of the same view, you'll have an idea of how dense it really was that morning.
Later that day, the sun came out and it became one of those treasured "golden" days.
And here, totally unrelated to the fog except for the word also beginning with an f, are some more Florentines for John:
I was on about Florentines not that long ago, but the ones I posted then were not the "original" ones I remember so well from my childhood.
These ones that I had at my Mum's for dessert (just one, not all three of them) after lunch on Thursday come as close to the original ones as possible. I swear they were wider back then, though, and thinner; so thin you'd have to be a bit careful in removing them from the paper bag in which they came from the bakery, so as not to break them.
So, John, how are these for Florentines?
